Master of Puppets
by Riddlehum
Summary: The gates close soundly behind her, and she enters a world where black and white are imaginary constants in a world shaded in grey. DeLane discovers corruption and compassion in unexpected places, the Dark Knight is a glimpsed shadow on the periphery of her vision, and an old patient is on the long road to a disturbing epiphany. As snow falls, Arkham City is risen.
1. Chapter 1

I made sure to have the next few chapters completed (this one is fairly short, particularly compared to the next one... which is 6000 words) before posting the first as a way to safeguard against a kind of false start on my part – which is likely to happen, since I'm now more involved in film and general collegey stuff... FUUUUTTTUUUURRREEE *convulses in foetal position* Reading the first instalment isn't necessarily required, but everything here would make a helluva lot more sense if you did. (Also - shameless plug - the oneshots that go between the two main sections help as well.)

Warning: this is going to be considerably darker than _Symphony_. This is set after _Bridge-Tap Tango_ and before _A Needle_ _Sharply_, as the latter oneshot technically takes place after Batman has entered Arkham City. There's a lot more happening at once, here. Hopefully I balance it all well enough to maintain the integrity of my pacing. Meh. You be the judge. (whispers: tell me in a review)

**Oh, yeah. Storywide disclaimer:**

_**Yes****. I am Rocksteady and DC Comics. **_**Behold, I own all the things. (No.)****  
**

* * *

One: Mercy In Darkness

_Deep into that darkness_

_peering,_

_long I stood there, fearing,_

_doubting,_

_dreaming dreams no mortal_

_ever dared_

_to dream before._

-Edgar Allen Poe

* * *

Chopper blades drowned out the commotion of the crowds beneath us as we crossed over the border into Arkham City.

It was Bruce Wayne against the world, down there. For days campaigns had battled outside the gates to the precinct, rebutting each other with the same arguments over and over again. Both sides like broken records.

Not that any of their quibble mattered. Not really.

Gotham had been a police state since June, when a group of ex-con Titan junkies had thought it appropriate to bomb City Hall as retribution for the drug being confiscated and subsequently banned. Those idiots sealed the fate of Arkham City the same moment they secured their first cluster of explosives. No amount of public protest would stop the prison's doors from opening. Wayne's billionaire-philanthropist gig was likely to cause more problems than it could ever hope to fix; Mayor Sharp had made it abundantly clear that public opposition to the precinct would not be tolerated. By penalty of _imprisonment_.

Arkham City had opened exactly four hours ago, at 9am on November 18th, 2010. Eighteen months after the last breakout on Arkham Island.

Inmates and patients had been trucked to the fortress in armoured caravans the morning Quincy Sharp cut the red ribbon. Staff like ourselves would be airlifted in by TYGER personnel to the reduce risk of – well, _attack –_ during transit. It was one of those unspoken, taboo things that made everyone uneasy. _If this is supposed to be safer, why are we in even more danger than before? _

But many rumours now flew in the Arkham community regarding the whereabouts of the Rogue inmates that had escaped in last year's breakout. Among them was the Joker, the Clown Prince himself, whose medical condition was reported to have worsened considerably after the Joker Rebellion. Once those high-security patients had flown the coop, they had never resurfaced. The _Times_ often postulated that the inmates had fled to the City, seeking the shelter of the abandoned streets even as Arkham's great walls were erected around them. Their speculation made our journey seem all the more perilous – and it made the doctors, of course, all the more paranoid.

Icy gusts of wind battered my face, tugging strands of hair from my ponytail as our helicopter cut a steady path towards the heart of Arkham City. Our destination was marked by the enormous spire of Gotham's legendary but ridiculously taboo _Wonder Tower_. The chill managed to permeate even the bulk of our thermals and bulletproof vests. I noticed that most of my small team were suppressing shivers, myself included.

Only one of these ashen, despondent faces I actually knew: Senior Nurse McAllister. Once regular infirmary staff, she was now matron of the entire division. Her red hair was pulled back in a tight bun, her jaw set and her shoulders squared. Her hands were fisted in the material of a backpack bursting with extra medical supplies. Laced up with armour and fatigues, she looked like a soldier. More likely to handle an assault rifle than administer an IV.

She was possibly the strongest, most honest, and most straightforward person I had ever met at Arkham, and I was unimaginably relieved to have her near me on this dismal journey.

But I shifted my gaze away from the stern Scot, instead looking out at the frozen wasteland below.

Dilapidated buildings rose up towards the sky from cracked streets. Small fires burned in pockets – in the rooms of defiled apartment buildings, in the pits of metal trash bins and piles of debris. I could make out tiny figures huddled around these fires. They would keep just warm enough to prevent frostbite from setting in. Frost whirled down the streets in merciless flurries, an endless barrage. It was a cruel and unusual environment. Criminal or not, no one deserved abandonment to a frozen wasteland, cut off from food and proper shelter.

But it was clear to me now that Arkham City was not just a prison.

Arkham City was a man-made circle of hell.

The helicopter touched down in the City's barricaded centre just as fresh flakes of snow began to fall, whipped up in haphazard swirls by the wind. What seemed like a legion of TYGER guards rushed out to meet the chopper, corralling my small medical team like sheep. Hangar doors slid shut behind us, sealing away the outside world as we rushed to shelter.

We were pressed forward at a pace that was nearly a run, moving too quickly and surrounded by too many guards to see much of the hangar itself. What I did see – the high ceiling, the metal and concrete fortifications, the bustle of militant personnel, more black helicopters, guns, so many guns – looked less like an asylum and more like a military compound. A _bunker_.

It was not a comforting analysis, but we were not afforded time to dwell upon it.

As quickly as we had entered the hangar we were leaving it, passing through another set of heavy doors and into another large room. It was only then that the guards relaxed their tightly pressed ranks, allowing the new environment to open up before us.

The lobby of the Arkham City Psychiatric and Medical Ward was metallic, colourless, and virtually empty compared to the militant reception bay.

A handful of medical staff met us in the middle of the lobby as our TYGER entourage retreated back into the hangar behind us. I recognised a few faces, but none were friendly. These doctors were haggard, ashen, and radiated anxiety. I plainly understood why: it was impossible to feel safe, here. Even among – no, _especially_ among – so many hired guns. There were more militia than doctors, here – more electric wands and knives and guns than painkillers.

Perhaps it was also the countless posters and painted stencils of the ex-professor's face glaring down at the City and its inhabitants; the atmosphere of martial law, the feeling of powerlessness beneath a corrupt higher power. It was like a scene out of _1984_. Every poster was a reminder of who was in control: the inmates were free to roam the streets of Arkham City, yes – but in the manner of starving rats racing through a circuitous laboratory maze. Big Brother was always watching. Big Brother had the power. And what did that make us, the staff?

Arkham was meant to be an institution of healing, not a concentration camp.

We were checked in one at a time. My clearance as a chief medical officer (new government installation meant new government title) was one of the highest that staff could achieve without being a member of the TYGER militia. I was to have full access to every medical ward in the compound, almost like a Medical Warden – a far cry more involved than my position at Arkham Island, but one I was more than prepared to handle. I was one of three doctors with such clearance; we were meant to work together. To my knowledge, I was the last to have arrived in Arkham City.

But when the woman working the front desk handed over my badge, she halted me from collecting my office key. When mouth opened to protest she only gestured to something over my shoulder.

In a fluster I turned, my boots squeaking against the cold tile floor. Behind me was the last of my group moving swiftly to their assigned locations, scattering from the lobby floor like a flock of charcoal birds sweeping up and away in search of shelter. I caught a flash of red as McAllister disappeared down a hallway.

But making no move to follow the crowd was a male doctor I did not recognise. He stood against the flush of movement like a boulder in a stream, dressed in khakis and a thermal beneath a stained, wrinkled lab coat. His mere presence unnerved me, and the muscles along my spine tightened with unease at his proximity. The lab coat was the only dishevelled article on his person; everything else about him appeared miraculously manicured, even his hair. The badge clipped to his lapel was a clearance level I did not recognise.

He felt... _wrong_.

"What is this?" I demanded.

He remained unruffled, and even extended a hand in peaceful greeting. "Dr Michaels," he offered. "Nice to finally meet you, Dr DeLane. I've heard great things."

I made no move to accept his hand. A tiny smile curled the corner of his mouth and he tucked the unwanted greeting behind his back. The humour touched his eyes in a way that unnerved me further. There was an emptiness in his face that made the curve of his lips seem sinister.

"Is there something I can do for you?" Impatience crept into my tone, blatantly undisguised. "I have an office to organize."

The awful twinkle remained in his eyes as he held my gaze. "You are scheduled for an interview with Professor Strange." On cue, a pair of TYGER guards materialised, silently flanking him. "All department heads are to be evaluated before beginning work. It's Arkham City protocol."

My eyes narrowed as I absorbed this information. An interview with Professor Strange.

_Strange_.

Uneasiness gathered in the pit of my stomach, sickening and cold. Nothing about this boded well. I hadn't been told about staff interviews. I hazarded a glance at the receptionist, face questioning. The woman, wide-eyed and mousy, made a gesture of helplessness. As if she was saying, _I don't know anything about it, either. _Her gaze flitted up in a quick glance over my shoulder then back down again. In that brief second, I had seen something like fear flash in the corners of her eyes. Like an animal instinctively cowering before a superior. Or perhaps before a predator.

I inhaled meditatively through my nose, clearing my head; I swivelled back to face the man in the stained coat.

_Business is business,_ I reminded myself, _and I am guiltless._

Fixing Dr Michaels with a steely frown, I lifted my chin high and gave my acquiescence with all the diplomatic grace of an air raid.

"Make it quick."

* * *

Dr Michaels and his entourage of guards shepherded me to a heavyset, password-protected elevator. One of the guards entered a long combination-pin and swiped his ID badge. The elevator doors slid open, beckoning us entrance. Trapped between guns and heavy combat boots, I stepped into the armoured lift.

With a lurch that rattled up my spine, we started upward. The elevator rose higher and higher for what seemed like an eternity. When the lift finally jittered to a halt, I was led through a labyrinth of weakly lit, cable-lined hallways. The floor seemed to sway almost imperceptibly with the height of the Tower. The tension was palpable, the silence broken only by the thumping of boots against metal grating and Kevlar against khakis. We turned corner after corner, each hallway as blank and lifeless as the last. They all looked the same. By the time we reached out destination, I was effectively lost.

_Trapped and lost in the overworld of a militant institution run by a morally questionable scientist._ Poetically appropriate, maybe, but extremely unnerving.

My entourage corralled me against a steel door bolted with heavy locks. With a swipe of an ID card and the tap of gloved fingers on a touch screen, the door disengaged. Dr Michaels set his weight against it and pushed it open, crowding me inside.

He said, "The Doctor will see you now," and with another eerie smile, closed the heavy door behind me.

The shudder of the bolt sliding back into place resonated in my stomach, paralleling the sense of dread that settled there. Locked in. Sealed, like my fate seemed to be.

_Do I even believe in fate?_

Today, I might.

I turned to face the room, my body rigid with steeled nerves – and took in the sight before me with a shock.

The room was lofty and open, rounded. It was oddly ornate. Windows lined the outer walls, where balconies looked out at the city far below. Cold drafts wafted in from the outdoors, swirling through the tower's top like wind in a funnel. The air felt thin in my lungs.

A lone TYGER guard, his gun strapped to his back, was waiting for me. Wordlessly, he guided me to a staircase, ascending to the room's upper level. In the middle of the room, I now saw, was a kind of closed-off hub.

It didn't require description. _Strange's office._

Hugo had roosted atop the city like a bird of prey in a lofty nest... A nest guarded with guns and digital locks. Isolated, yet situated at the centre of everything.

The openness somehow made the room seem all the more forbidding. Like walking into the lair of a Bond villain, where everything was opulent and grand – a facetious exterior hiding the danger beneath. Hiding the corruption. The _madness_.

We reached the top of the carpeted stairs. The TYGER man ushered me along, towards a stretch of glass wall with a view into Hugo's office. As we neared, my heart skipped a beat. There he was.

Few ever saw him in person, these days. His image was only recognisable by the vectored renditions of his visage on posters all across the City. Long white lab coat. Black gloves. A balding head, a manicured beard. The edge of his glasses glinting in the overhead lights. He was tweaking with the machines on the far wall.

We stopped beside the glass, looking in. Perhaps it was the thin air, or maybe the cold. But now I was dazed, my pulse loud in my ears. Weeks of conspiracy theories flooded back to me from a year ago, on Arkham Island.

As if sensing our presence, Hugo Strange turned to face us. Our eyes met. I could have sworn he smiled, just faintly. Then he calmly lifted a hand and gave a little wave, as if gesturing for us to proceed. I blinked, slowly emerging from the haze of the past, and began to move for the door to the inner sanctum. I made it a meagre two steps.

The hand that reached around to smother my mouth with a rag was strong and armoured, and a gasp of surprise sealed my fate. The vaguely sweet taste of Chloroform filled my nostrils and mouth, flowing up my sinuses and straight to the exposed blood vessels of my brain. My heart had time to spurt with panic and adrenaline, beating fruitlessly in my chest as the urge to scream welled in my throat.

But the drug was too potent, the hand too strong, and the world began to fade from me. The strength left my limbs and my eyelids drooped and gravity increased on my body and then,

Nothing.


	2. Secrets In Blood

_You guys signed on for this fic so fast I'm scared now that it's not gonna be good enough eeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkk *assumes the crash position* ilu review_

**Two: Secrets In Blood**

"_Blood alone moves the wheels of history."_

-Martin Luther

* * *

My cheek was flattened against freezing ground, numb and stinging. My lips were swollen with bruises and cracked from the cold. I could feel blood crusted to my face in a long smear, probably originating somewhere around the throbbing of my left eyebrow. My mouth tasted of cotton and iron and frost.

Vaguely I recalled a struggle. Memories surfaced, shadowed with drowsiness, like peering into a pool murky with mud. Memories of sleeping without wanting to sleep. Of waking somewhere too dark to see where my ears ached with the roar of engines and where the cloying air smelled of rotting burlap and where fingers dug bruises into my arms as they held me down. Memories of my brain suffocating on air that was thin with oxygen and heavy with my own breath. Memories of something hitting my head hard, hard enough to make lights dance behind eyelids squeezed shut against the pain...

My head throbbed as I tried to lift it, and I let it sink back against the concrete. The cold floor bucked and dipped beneath me in a bout of dizziness; nausea gathered in my gut like steam trapped beneath the lid of a pressure cooker, threatening to escape.

Voices reached my ears as I stirred.

"Hey... poor bitch is comin' 'round." The sound, rough and male. There was a shuffling of boots. Panic lanced through my aching chest – _not alone, attackers, kidnappers_ – and my eyes snapped open to pick out the danger. The world on the other side of my eyelids was blurry, grey, and wildly askew. The voices continued,

"You called the boss lady down yet?"

"Yeah. She was at the docks for the delivery."

"Well she better hurry up. I can't feel my fingers anymore, man."

"Oh, shut up. Stop being such a little bitch."

"Fuck off, you have _gloves_."

"I'm gonna shove my gloves up your _ass_ if you don't _shut up_."

A long, silent pause. I didn't want to move, my head throbbed with each beat of my pulse.

"Aw c'mon... seriously, I'm going numb, here. Where—"

What sounded like a door slammed open, startling me. Another pair of boots pounded in, stomping the floorboards with an enthusiastic gait. And then a high, _loud_ feminine voice filled my ears.

"I'm _hoooome_. Now where is –" the words broken by a high pitched, horrified gasp – "You _IDIOTS! _How is Mr J s'posed to have _any_ chance a' gettin' healthy if you leave his doctor out in the cold ta _freeze_ ta death?"

A blundering mix of barely intelligible apologies from the two men, voices pitchy with fear. The Brooklyn accent cut in sharply, "Just get outta here, numbskulls, before I throw you out in pieces!"

Hurried thumping of boots on the floorboards as the two men fled.

My addled brain was slow on the uptake. It took too long to connect the dots of what I was hearing – and when I finally did, the Brooklyn woman's heeled boots were already heading my direction with a leisurely, swaggering gait. The boots stopped a few feet from my face, one black, one red. My heart began to pound, body flushing with panic and adrenaline as realisation dawned.

_ Harley Quinn._

"Well, doc? Ya gonna lay there forever or ya gonna get up and drink this coffee I brought ya?" The red boot scuffed the wood floor impatiently. But I was paralysed.

Harley sighed heavily. "Alrighty then. Up ya get."

Strong fingers closed around my upper arm, digging mercilessly into the cold, chapped skin. Then the Rogue hefted me upward, hooking my captive arm across her shoulders and literally kicking my legs into a standing position. "There."

I could feel her pigtails bouncing against my neck as my body was forced to become vertical. We were hip to hip; the contact was painfully abrasive. My vision tunnelled and my knees buckled as the blood rushed to my head. My hearing muffled, like someone had stuffed cotton into my ears, and I remained upright only by way of Harley's considerable strength.

Her resilience, however, did nothing to stop the nausea.

My body doubled forward with the force of the sudden urge to retch. I was blindly sick in the direction of the floor, coughing and choking up what little I'd had in my stomach. There was a long pause as I spat mouthfuls of bile and struggled to catch my breath. Then,

"Well that was gross. Those morons musta roughed you up pretty good, huh Doc?"

I couldn't have spoken if I'd had something to say.

No sooner than I had stopped retching, I was moving. Suspended in the Rogue's rough grip, my body was forcibly lurched across the room. My feet struggled to keep up with the motion; but the journey was short.

As my vision returned, the room came into hazy focus around me. A corner desk appeared in my line of vision, littered with rotting paperwork. Harley dropped my dead weight into a chair at the desk and plopped into a chair adjacent. She thumped a Styrofoam cup of something dark onto the hardwood, thrusting it towards me. The cup coasted across the desk, surfing a stray piece of paper like a wakeboard and then settling to a halt at the very edge. The corner of the paper fluttered in the breeze, bristling precariously in the empty space between my lap and the tabletop.

It took several long moments for me to realise that this strange cup of something was meant for my consumption. Blinking through the delirium of residual nausea and pain and cold, I made a great effort of closing my fingers around the curved surface. My fingers cooperated dubiously. The cup was warm, and its dark contents smelled vaguely of coffee. Had she said something about coffee?

I lifted the cup to my lips and, cautiously, let some of the liquid slosh back into my mouth. It was coffee.

Hideous, gritty, warm-dishwater coffee.

But it was _coffee_.

Eyes fluttering shut, I took another swig – much bigger this time – and grimaced as the acrid taste washed away the bile from my mouth like acid through grease. The heat hit my gut like a hot coal, radiating warmth back into my core.

When I opened my eyes again, I became sharply aware that Harley was watching me. She had acquired a colourful, streamer-wrapped wooden baseball bat.

Harley was a Barbie doll wrapped in shiny, squeaky leather. Her exposed midriff allowed me view of the large tattoo on her hip: the Joker on a rose-wrapped playing card. The tattoo's twin formed a ring around her right bicep. Her whited face and darkened eyes and stained pigtails gave her the appearance of a macabre porcelain figurine.

I spoke uncensored past the bitter taste in my mouth.

"Where did you get coffee?"

Harley shrugged. "We got ourselves connections, dollface. And a' course a little skull-bashing tends to get us cooperation real quick." She illustrated this with a lazy thump of the colourful baseball bat against her chair leg.

She was still watching me with mild interest. It was the gaze of a practised, if lazy, psychiatrist. A chill rattled up my spine – and not from the cold. _She's not the idiot everyone says. She's much, much more._

"Why are you doing this?" The words left my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. "Why... am I here? Why am I not locked away somewhere, or... whatever it is that Rogues do with hostages?"

Harley abruptly swung her legs up to rest them on the corner of the wood desk, crossing her ankles and easing back into her creaky chair. She had apparently been waiting for this inquiry.

"_First_ of all," her accent made the syllables dip and swing like a funhouse rollercoaster, "_Rogues_ don't take hostages unless they're usin' 'em as bait. _Then_ they'd be tied up and all, and strapped up somewhere for the Bat or whoever to go lookin' for 'em. _You_, honey, _obviously_ ain't bait. _You_ are gonna be Mr J's doctor!" Her expression brightened at the thought, then reversed into one of theatrically deep suffering. She leaned forward, voice dropping into a conspirational whisper. "See, Mr J is pretty sick from all those chemicals the Bat made him use last year – and those awful doctors at Arkham never did a thing to help him! So you're here to figure out what's wrong with him and _fix _it!"

The caffeinated sludge appeared to be thawing my neurons. Realisation was dawning. My eyes widened, pulse jumping.

"Strange sent me... to treat the_ Joker_?"

Harley's pathetically tragic expression twisted into something, and in the next moment I was choking on Harley's baseball bat. Its rounded end pushed hard against my throat; a flick of her wrist would crush my windpipe like tissue paper.

"You won't bring _him_ up again if you know what's good for you," she snarled. "You can still doctor up my Puddin' with a black eye and a few missin' fingers. I don't wanna hear about Strange, and neither does Mr J. _Capice_?"

I scarcely managed to nod in agreement, my throat crushed between the back of my chair and the end of Harley's bat. After a long, painful moment, Harley released. I was left to choke oxygen back into my lungs. Harley's demeanour smoothed over as I regained my breath, and she was once again pleasantly calm. But the bat now lay across her lap – a warning.

Rubbing my throat I averted my gaze to the floor and focussed on maintaining my composure despite my racing heart. This information changed everything. Strange, working with the Rogues he wanted so desperately to lock away? That by itself was a scandal and a half. Blackgate prisoners and Rogues were sentenced by martial law to tend to their own ills; Arkham staff jurisdiction had especially prohibited contact with inmates outside of the central precinct. (If we were even _in_ Arkham City anymore) So packaging up and shipping off high-ranking medical officers to fulfil negotiations with king of the Rogues? An unimaginable slight it would be, in the eyes of the city council.

– If they ever found out, of course. That was another matter entirely.

What was even more interesting was how intensely Harley seemed to resent Strange, even at the mere mention of his name. That possibly implied that the cards were _not_ in Joker's hands... that their negotiations were not on his terms. That Strange could potentially be in control of someone as wild as the Joker.

A frightening thought, by itself.

But what could Strange possibly think to gain from such a transaction?

My stomach turned. I set my cup of sludge aside, tasting bile again. On an impulse I returned my focus to the prospect of action – the comforting black and white world of medicine where confusing feelings were irrelevant.

"Do I have a place to work?" I asked suddenly.

"Huh?" Harley had spaced out.

"A place to work. A lab? With medical materials? Somewhere I can properly test Joker's blood." My brow creased at the almost empty look on Harley's face.

"Huh," she flicked at a piece of paper on the table, sending it fluttering off into empty space. The cold draft carried it halfway across the room, before setting it gently down. "Never really thought of it. The others never made it very far, ya know." (_Others?_ My pulse jumped again.)But she paused and shifted her weight into a musing contrapposto, balanced on one hip. "Ya really serious 'bout this, ain'tcha?"

"...A patient is a patient. Being guilty of a crime does not deprive a human of his right to live."

Harley continued to regard me quizzically. "Yeah? Most Arkham docs wouldn'ta said so. _Particularly_ about my Puddin'."

All I could think to say was, "I'm not most."

But still she continued to stare. Many long, scrutinous seconds passed. I could feel her eyes picking me apart, as if she could peel back the layers of my skin to see who I was underneath. It made my skin crawl.

"Wait just a _second_," her head cocked to one side, pigtails bouncing. "I think I _heard_ about you... Yeah. Back at the island."

My insides constricted with a flush of panic.

"I wouldn't doubt it," I headed her off at the pass, saving my own dignity by confessing before she could have the pleasure of finding me out. "The nickname was everywhere. When I received a Rogue into my ward by mistake, I consequently discovered the atrocious nature of patient treatment within Intensive. I was outraged, and I reacted..."

Of course, there were all the little things that had kept me in Intensive; things with little to do with my medical philosophy – the notes, the riddles, the death of the Assistant Warden... the escape.

Things that had nearly destroyed my sanity.

"_Rogue_-Doctor." Harley crowed. "That was it!" She burst into giggles for a few seconds before pouting again. "Not much good though, were ya? Never helped my poor Puddin! Left him all alone in that little cell, no one to talk to, rottin' to pieces."

"I would never have been let near a patient of such high security, not so soon after the breakout." It came out sharp. I bit my tongue, wisely, before I could add _The Riddler was only a fluke._ "But you can allow me to make up for that, now. To cure him."

Harley spent a long moment sizing me up with her heavily painted eyes. I was struck with the sudden, irrational fear that my offer was going to be rejected. But then she hopped lithely to her feet, kicking her chair away.

"Okay," she thrust the end of the baseball bat at my nose. "But don't screw it up!"

* * *

It occurred to me belatedly that I was not emotionally prepared to interact with the Joker.

Harley was different – we had a kind of common ground, as women and as doctors (the semantics of that classification notwithstanding). But the Joker? Even the hardiest psychiatrists had been eventually deigned ill-suited to handle him. He was the living epitome of his chosen name: the wild card. Crafty, unpredictable, unbound by most forms of linear thinking. Often needlessly violent, other times unbearably insightful. He could pick apart psychiatrists better than psychiatrists, and yet – he was thought insane.

Truly a conundrum. He had certainly earned his title of criminal royalty.

My heart throbbed uncomfortably in my chest, pulse twitching in my throat as Harley led me toward the 'office' where the Joker rested ("Ya get to have a little tour!"). It had occurred to me as we moved on that_ I had no idea where I was_. I didn't even know if I was in Arkham City, anymore. Or even Gotham, for that matter.

Harley – her jaunty skip rattling me about, as she had a tight grip on my wrist – led me through a maze of strange machinery and rusting metal hallways. The environment confused me enormously until we finally reached a door situated beneath an archway with a name lit up with LED lights: FUNHOUSE. But it was a display that had been welded over a pre-existing insignia that I only barely made out before we passed underneath: SIONIS.

Sionis.

_As in... Roman Sionis?_

..._The Black Mask?_

My mind processed that. Was this one of the steelworks factories that Roman had taken over? Several years ago, before his mob connections were known, the name of Sionis began cropping up all over the papers. Company after company being bought out by a growing conglomerate. This plant must have been left to rot after his first containment at Arkham.

...There was a steelworks factory in Arkham City, wasn't there?

The interior of the 'funhouse' caught me by surprise. I wasn't sure if it was awe I felt so much as a peaking sense of uneasiness, but there was certainly something compelling about the sight of several roller-coaster tracks snaking through the air at the ceiling, seemingly large and sturdy enough to hold a passenger cart. The tracks originated somewhere outside the room, filtering through holes cut into the walls and the corners of the ceiling. The rest of the vast room was strung with coloured lights and flags and the walls themselves were decorated with twisted murals of circus-related paraphernalia.

_How long have they been here? _I had to wonder._ Since the last breakout? This must have taken ages to construct._

At the other end of the Funhouse, Harley pulled me through another set of double doors with her free hand, practically bouncing into the next room. As the doors parted, a narrow hallway opened up before us. It was lit with a series of arrows along the floor, like runway lights for some circus airstrip. LED lights were strung all over, and the wood floor (soft and creaky with the damp) was littered with paper and debris. The hall ended with a large and drafty room on one side and an odd doorway on the other. That pair of double doors were bolted with a heavy padlock.

"Mr J! Mr J, look!" Harley's exclamation snapped me sharply to the present. "The new doc is here!"

"Harley!" A familiar voice answered the call. "Bring the poor soul in."

My eyes traced the origin of the sickly, rasping, but passionately jovial greeting: a shrunken form silhouetted by the window, propped up in a wheelchair. An IV stand had been set up next to him, the metal winking in the light of LED bulbs and the broken city outside.

My legs carried me almost mechanically alongside Harley. My heart hammered in my chest, pumping my veins full of nerves and adrenaline and... a small, fluttery fragment of wonder. A tiny but vibrant anticipation.

_The Joker._

Harley pulled me abruptly in front of me and began to push me on ahead. "We got a _special_ doc this time! She's gonna get ya all better!"

We jolted to a halt right behind the wheelchair. My heart was in my throat. I could now see the outline of Joker's jaw: long, sharply pointed – and riddled with lesions.

The most revered criminal in the history of Gotham City hacked a kind of barking laugh as he raised a hand to the wheel of his chair. He began to turn himself around to face us, shoulders shaking with suppressed humour.

Harley prompted me with a painful squeeze of my wrist, "Isn't that _right_, doc?"

In the next few moments the Joker sat in plain sight before me, the light washing across his angular face. Shadows settled into the deep creases of his nose and around his eyes. His papery skin was pockmarked with inflamed welts.

But it was his intense, dangerous, and highly intelligent gaze that stopped my pulse for several dizzying seconds.

"Yes." I could scarcely hear myself speak. "That is the plan."

The sickly Rogue's lips stretched over yellowed teeth in an impossibly wide grin. The image drove a cold shock up my spine and in a few heartbeats, I was overwhelmed with nerves. Adrenaline and panic built to a peak in my chest, closing up my throat.

_Logic_, my mind cried. _The haven from your fear. Work. He is a patient. Focus on the work._

My eyes fled immediately away from the Joker's as my clinical mind took over. Then there was only the work and the patient; the problem and the path to a solution. Everything else – fear, panic, self preservation – came second.

"What is in that IV?"

Joker coughed, but it sounded like a laugh. "Right to business, I see!" he rasped heartily. "Waste not, want not! It's just a little old saline solution I cooked up when the last doc was here. I _am_ a chemist, you know!"

_The last doctor. Others._ The implications rattled around in the corners of my mind. _No. Focus._

If a saline had been needed, then he must not have been absorbing nutrients properly (this was likely, given his exceedingly emaciated stature). Or perhaps the doctor had simply provided the request to procure a false sense of his or her own usefulness.

Perhaps it was both.

"...Have you been eating?"

"Out _here_? My dear, have you _seen_ this place? The princess in the tower may have been accommodating enough to send me a little medical assistance, but he's not _that_ generous."

...Well that settled one question: this factory was indeed in Arkham City. _The escaped Rogues may be here, after all._

(But then I imagined Hugo Strange in a puffy pink dress and pointy hat, and had to perish the thought and move on before the image permanently stained my mind.)

"May I...?" I gestured haltingly at Joker's whole person, taking a hesitant step forward.

"Of course." He spread his arms as wide as his IV cord allowed, splaying himself against his wheelchair and quirking a suggestive eyebrow. "I'm _all_ yours, doc."

"Hey!"

"Whoops! Sorry, Harley."

The lack of apology in his voice was as comical as it was painful. Harley may have been sharper than she let on, but when it came to the Clown Prince? She was utterly lost.

I approached the Joker with caution, kept my countenance carefully schooled.

Deep in the pocket of my TYGER-issue pants was a balled up package of examination gloves, I recalled, along with the stethoscope I carried like a hunter might a pocketknife. Donning a pair of the former, I reached out to examine the Joker's skin up close. He allowed the contact with the unapologetic openness of a nudist at the beach.

The lesions were reminiscent of psoriasis, and they were present just about everywhere. ("Got them all _over_, my dear! Hehe – those hard to reach places are _killing_ me.") Harley fixed me with an intense stinkeye when I opened Joker's shirts to expose his chest, her glare burning holes into my back. It took a great deal of willpower to ignore her. I listened to Joker's weakening heart and raspy breathing, ignoring his giggled comments about the cold metal of my stethoscope; it appeared that whatever was affecting his skin was also affecting his insides. The strain in his voice was not due to blockage, but rawness and constriction.

His body was becoming inflamed, particularly around the joints – which, in this weather, would be particularly uncomfortable. The cold would only perpetuate, if not simply accelerate, the deterioration of his health. A blood test would help determine the state of his major organs, I hoped. The health of his liver and kidneys would at least give me a sense of how quickly he was degenerating – and how long I had to fix him.

It was abundantly clear, of course, that failing to do so would mean my immediate execution. However... the chances that I would be allowed to live anyway, were I to succeed, were probably not much better.

Alas: one option was still more hopeful than the other.

* * *

I was started off with a sketchy microscope and a fresh blood sample, and my workspace was a dilapidated control room in one of the colder quadrants of the Sionis Steel Mill. The space had been stripped of its decaying computer units; they were piled up in a stack of shattered glass and broken plastic and frayed wires outside the room. I was assured by a Joker guard – one of the higher-ups, it seemed, as this guy was marginally smarter than the rest – that there was still enough power for me to run equipment.

I imagined this information had been provided by the Clown Prince, himself.

He was a criminal and chemical _genius_, after all.

Outside the control room stood an ominously larger-than-life sculpture – a disturbing caricature of Harley Quinn, with a curvaceous body and an excessively inflated head. The figure's hand held a glowing heart labelled _Mr J._ I had given it a wide berth as the Joker guards herded me into my makeshift laboratory, and I noticed the goons did, too. It was... creepy. I was struck with the unmistakable suspicion that the statue was... _watching_ us.

As irrational as it sounded, there was something that felt very possible about that analysis.

Over the course of the next few hours, packages of equipment appeared sporadically at the control room door. I was not prepared to question how the gear was acquired, nor was I prepared to deal with answer. But soon, the only questions occupying my mind were related to my work.

I became irrevocably immersed.

Hours and hours later, an immunochemistry analyser now processed a sample for specific defects in the Joker's blood and a clunky clinical analyser completed a urine analysis. Meanwhile, I tested a few drops of Joker's blood beneath a microscope, taking notes on whatever scraps of dry paper I could find.

What I had discovered so far was not exactly in the realm of good news, and it was why I had duct-taped my long sleeves beneath the ends of my exam gloves and hidden my face behind a medical mask and scratched plastic goggles. My thermal turtleneck was pulled as high as it could go, bunched up at the rim of my jaw to hide my abrasions. My split eyebrow was taped up and hidden beneath several layers of gauze. I had even taped up the tears in my pants. Only the skin of my cheekbones was actually exposed.

Whatever was in Joker's blood was freakishly contagious.

Blood-to-blood contact had a near instantaneous effect. I had wanted to test one of the samples for virulent characteristics, and the result had been shocking. I watched, on slide after slide, as drops of my own blood absorbed and duplicated the mutant particles like an infection.

Once infected, the blood cells gradually began to wilt. The plasma thickened very slowly, turning dark. The first few sample combinations I had set aside had taken but four point four hours to take on a hue of maroon so dark and thick that it looked violet under the grimy fluorescents.

It was not a comforting observation.

The information returned to me by the immunochemistry machine was equally discomfiting. The mutant particles were a unique – I daresay _new_ – molecular combination. It was essentially a virus that had combined directly with the cell structures, reforming them instead of simply inhabiting them. Once changed... the cells began to deteriorate into a useless sludge of haemoglobin and water and _virus_.

My urinalysis told me more of the same – his kidney function was deteriorating, his white cell count was down and the infection had caused the remaining ones to degenerate. The sample's ketone levels were also very high, which confirmed my earlier deduction that Joker's body was already well into the stages of malnutrition.

I found myself dazedly wondering how the Joker had managed to survive so long with so much of the mutation coursing through his body with every beat of his weakening heart.

The question birthed a slew of hypotheses and my work took on a new direction.

* * *

The beaten-to-hell stopwatch resting at the edge of my workspace had been counting the passage of time since I'd begun observing my first Petri dish of mixed blood.

It now read _10:26:735_. Ten hours.

In my windowless room I had no indication of the passage of time outside of that stopwatch. I sat back on my rickety stool, staring blankly at the watch's digital readout. It continued to count the passing seconds.

_Ten hours._

I wasn't tired. Or if I was, I couldn't feel it. But neither was I energetic; I supposed it was the conundrum of overexhaustion. Too tired to feel tired. The only option was momentum. _Keep working._

But I continued to stare at the stopwatch, counting the passing seconds. My mind had struck a blank...

_-Bangbangbang._

I near startled clean off my rusted perch, convulsing with the electricity of panic. Someone had rapped at the heavy metal of the control room door, shattering the silence that had persisted unbroken for at least the last hour.

My voice sounded alien to my ears as I hurriedly began to move contaminated blood samples out of the way. "Come in?"

The door burst open. Harley strode in, swinging that colourful baseball bat of hers in lazy loops.

"G'mornin' doc!" The bat arced high into the air, started its downward descent. "How–"

"No!" My hands flew out, catching and halting the end of her bat with the remarkable accuracy of instinct. My pulse had tripled in the space of a few seconds. The bat had come within a few inches of smashing a Petri dish of mutated blood.

There was a long, tense, and very _still_ pause. We both stared at the dish, and she could only discern the intensity of the moment from the wild look in my goggled eyes.

"Whoops," she finally said, looking me up and down. "Is that important?"

"It's infectious." Very slowly, she allowed me to remove the rainbow bat from her hands. I set it down, ever so gently, in the corner.

"Is that my Puddin's blood?" Harley shrank away from the interior of the makeshift lab and opted to stand in the doorway instead, hands held up around her chin. Her boots squeaked on the grungy tile. She was eyeing the globby black blood sample with a wary expression.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"It don't look so good."

"No."

"You can fix it, right?" The genuine concern in her voice was a little heartbreaking. Her eyes were still fixed on the Petri dish of virulent mutation.

I blanched for a long moment, unsure of what to say. "The mutation is complex, and it... it's strange. Independent samples indicate a rate of deterioration far more rapid than what the Joker is experiencing. As far as I can tell... the only thing keeping him alive is the residual effect of the Titan compound on his body. The steroid is killing him, but it's also keeping him alive."

Harley blinked. "But you're gonna fix it."

"That is the idea." I pulled the surgery mask off my face so it hung loosely around my chin, pushed the plastic eyeglasses onto my head. "So far it hasn't responded to anything I've done to it... I don't think the resources I have here are going to be enough."

We lapsed into silence. Harley continued to stare intently at the dish of blood, as if she could will it into submission. Then,

"If you had the right stuff, could you do it?"

Without missing a beat I said, "It's a distinct possibility."

But it wasn't a distinct possibility, not at all. I had virtually no idea what I was going to do next. I was a field and surgery trained doctor, not a genetic chemist. But I couldn't exactly say '_no, Joker us going to die and my services are irrelevant_.'

Nevertheless – Harley looked satisfied.

"Good enough for me. Whatcha need, doc?"

* * *

Three days had passed since I had woken up on the floor of the Sionis Steel Mill.

Time moved in a confusing blur, sometimes too slow, sometimes too fast. I slept perhaps twice – short naps that were more accidental than conscious breaks. Harley made sure I had a small (very small) ration of food and the occasional dose of dishwater-coffee. I left the control room only for the bathroom, and guards were stationed outside the door at all times. During those three days I had compiled a considerably thorough set of observations about the Joker's virus. I learned as much about it as I could. I had done everything short of asking for the formula to the Titan itself.

But right now – I was standing warily in Joker's lofty office, taken aback by the scene before me.

"Surprise!" Joker hacked a wet cough following the exclamation, but persisted to gesture grandly at the newly arrived figure. "It's an early Christmas present from the Big Man Upstairs!"

Suited up like the Terminator, the newcomer was a hulking mass of robotics and glowing circuitry. Gears whirred in the joints of his suit as he moved; each step was a solid thump that reverberated through the floor and up my spine. He emanated a cold even deeper than the chill of the wind. The damp wood panelling refroze beneath his feet, creaking ominously. Frosty curls of fog dripped from his arms and shoulders like heavy smoke.

_Mr Freeze_. Better known to Arkham staff as Victor Fries.

"I'm afraid... I don't follow." I confessed, stifling a chilled shudder from the new Rogue's drafty presence. _As if it already wasn't cold enough in here._

"Frosty here is gonna help you fix Mr J," Harley supplied, leaning on her lover's wheelchair. "You need equipment, Snowman's got the stuff."

"I am not here because I want to be here." The words, loud and mutilated by the filter of Freeze's suit, resonated in the cavity of my chest. "I will do what is required of me, nothing more. Then you will give me Nora."

"Oh, lighten up! You'll get your Nora. Just you hold up _your_ end of the bargain, and I'll handle _mine_." Joker had a way of weaving the sound of a threat into octaves of otherwise harmless banter. Freeze did not respond.

But abruptly the suited scientist turned to look me right in the face. I may have startled.

"This is the doctor accompanying me?" His tone was direct.

"You will be working with me," I half-corrected, and stood a hair straighter. "The research is already underway. I merely lack certain... equipment."_ And nonexistent intellectual property._ "The resources I have been provided were sufficient only to a point. I have repeatedly tested and diagnosed the specific effects of the illness on a molecular level, but to _manufacture_ the cure..."

"You require the assistance of advanced technology." Freeze was all business, and it was actually refreshing. "I shall provide it. We will end this quickly. And then you will–"

"Yes, yes, we _know_." Joker waved Freeze to silence. "Give it a rest, doc, you're like a broken record." Freeze's already rigid posture appeared to tense further, but he said nothing. "Anyhoo, the clock is a-tickin'! It's time for you to head over to your new laboratory, all snug and cozied up just for you two kids. Guards! Escort the good doctors to the love boat, will you?"

A gaggle of Joker-thugs filtered into the room, most toting some form of machine gun or heavyset weapon. Freeze's heavy footsteps rattled into my skull as he turned to face them. Despite his great stature and menacing demeanour, the men were unafraid. But arrogance seemed to go hand in hand with working for the Joker. As if they possessed some kind of diplomatic immunity. I supposed that, in a sense – they did. The diplomacy of fear was an effective one, and just about everyone feared the Clown Prince.

A thug shoved the barrel of his gun against my side, urging me forward like a ranch hand wielding a cattle prod. I started towards the door with a jerk, grinding my teeth with the effort of stifling the urge to shove him away. With Freeze hissing and thumping along behind me, we were herded from the office without ceremony.

But before the heavy doors closed behind us, I heard a cheerful "Good luck, Rogue-doc! Don't let the Snowman get to ya!" from Harley in farewell.

It was almost a welcome concern.

Almost.

But not quite.


End file.
